Post-harvest grain losses create lower incomes and food insecurity among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Insufficient quality and quantity of on-farm storage forces farmers to sell their crops right after harvest, causing a surge in supply that lowers prices for their crops. Improved storage devices to reduce post-harvest losses exist, but are not readily being used by smallholder producers.
Market Solution
The four-year Pilot sought to promote high-impact agricultural innovations in grain storage that promoted Kenyan food security and provided income benefits for smallholder farmers. Instead of “pushing” development models on the private sector to promote smallholder farmer access to storage, Tanager managed a “pull” mechanism where we partnered with storage device manufactures and offered them incentives if they successfully marketed and sold large volumes of storage devices to smallholder farmers in the Rift Valley and Eastern regions of Kenya. A total of $7.75 million in performance-based grants were available to incentivize the storage manufactures to reach our large threshold targets for newly created grain storage capacity i.e., sales of devices that equal, in aggregate, 20,000MT of improved storage capacity.
Market Impact
To Pilot achieved:
413,265 MT of improved storage created translates to approximately 4.6 million 90-kg bags of maize safely stored from marauding grain pests which would ordinarily perpetrate losses of 12-20%. Using the 12-20% loss range, and assuming a modest market price of KES 2,500 per bag, the post-harvest loss averted is KES 1.38 billion – KES 2.3 billion.
The competitors created business linkages with agrodealers in the project counties, ensuring that hermetic storage devices are available nearest to the farmer. With time, a farmer anywhere in Kenya should be able to walk to the nearest agrodealer and purchase a hermetic device for their use, just like happens with other day-to-day products like milk, bread, or mobile phone airtime, which are always within easy reach!
The Competitor companies that helped create 413,265 MT improved storage capacity were awarded a total of US$6.25 million incentive prizes by the AgResults Steering Committee through Award ceremonies held in March and October 2018 in Nairobi.